Ethel Morton and the Christmas Ship Part 2

DOROTHY'S COTTAGE

ROSEMONT and Glen Point were two New Jersey towns near enough to New York to permit business men to commute every day and far enough away from the big city to furnish plenty of air and s.p.a.ce for the growing generation. It was the latter qualification that endeared them to the Morton and Hanc.o.c.k families, for there were no commuters in their households. Lieutenant Morton, father of Roger and Helen and Ethel Brown and d.i.c.ky, was on his ship in the harbor of Vera Cruz. Captain Morton, his brother, father of Ethel Blue, had returned to Gen. Funston's army after finding their sister, Mrs. Smith, at Chautauqua and convoying her with all the Mortons and Mrs. Morton's father and mother, Mr. and Mrs.

Emerson, back to Rosemont. His short furlough did not allow him to remain long enough to see his sister established in a house of her own, but it was understood that she was to hire a furnished house as near as possible to the Mortons' and live in it until she made up her mind where she wanted to build.

"Dorothy and I have wandered about the United States so long," she said plaintively, "that we are thankful to settle down in a town and a house that we can call our own, and we shall be even happier when we have a bungalow actually belonging to us."

At present they were still staying with the Mortons, but the Morton family was so large that two visitors crowded them uncomfortably and Mrs. Smith felt that she must not trespa.s.s upon her sister-in-law's hospitality longer than was absolutely necessary.

"I think the white cottage just around the corner will be the one that we will take," she said to Dorothy. "Come with me there again this afternoon for one more look at it, and then we'll make up our minds."

So they went to the white cottage and carefully studied its merits.

"The princ.i.p.al good thing about it is that it is near Aunt Marion's,"

declared Dorothy.

"I think so, too. And it is near school and church and the butcher's and baker's and candlestick-maker's. We shan't have very far to walk for anything."

"Oh, Mother, it doesn't seem possible that this can be _us_ really living and not just perching around, and having enough money and enough to eat and nothing to worry about."

Mrs. Smith threw her arm about Dorothy's shoulder.

"The thing for you to do to show your grat.i.tude is to grow well and strong just as fast as you can. I want to see you as rosy as the Ethels."

"They run me around so much that I think they'll do it for me before very long."

"They have a start, though, so you'll have to do all the vigorous things that they do and others too."

"You mean exercises at home?"

"Every morning when you get up you should do what a cat does when he wakes from a nap."

"I know--he stretches himself way out to the tips of his claws."

"And shakes himself all over. What do you suppose he's doing it for?"

"To stretch his muscles, I should think."

"And to loosen his skin and make himself generally flexible. Have you ever seen a sick cat? His coat looks dull and dry and woolly instead of silky, and when you feel of him his skin doesn't slip over his bones easily. It wouldn't be very complimentary to ourselves to say that you and I are sick cats just now, but it wouldn't be far from the truth."

"I don't much like the sound of it," laughed Dorothy. "What can we invalid p.u.s.s.ies do to get well?"

"A few simple exercises we ought to take every morning when we first get out of bed. We ought to stand first on one foot and then on the other, and swing vigorously the foot that is off the floor."

"That's easy."

"Then if we stretch our arms upward as high as we can, first one and then the other and then both, and then put our hands on the ribs of each side and stretch and lift them we shall have limbered up the lower and the upper parts of ourselves pretty thoroughly."

"I learned a good exercise for the waist muscles at the Girls' Club last summer. You sit down and roll the body at the waist line in all directions. You can do it standing, too; that brings in some different muscles."

"We'll do that. These few exercises will wake up every part of the body."

"We ought to do them with the windows open."

"When you first wake up after having the windows wide open all night you don't realize the cold in your room. It isn't until you have been to a warmer room that you notice the cold in your bedroom. So the best time to take these exercises is just the minute you hop out of bed. Stand in front of the open window and take deep breaths of air way down into the very lower tips of your lungs so that every tiny cell will be puffed out with good, fresh oxygen."

"It will take a lot of time to do all those exercises."

"Five minutes every morning will be enough if we do them vigorously. And you mustn't forget that your aim is to catch up with the Ethels."

"And then to beat them. I'll do it."

They went slowly through the cottage and planned the purpose to which they would put each room. It was simply furnished, but all the necessities were there.

"It's more fun this way than if there were a lot of furniture," said Dorothy, "because we can get what is lacking to suit ourselves."

"All the time that we are here we can be making plans for building our own little house."

"I can hardly wait to have it."

They hugged each other in their happiness and the tears were not far from the eyelids of both of them, for Mrs. Smith had not known anything but the actual necessities of living for many years and Dorothy had never known many comforts that had been every day matters and not luxuries to her mother's youth.

So Mrs. Smith hired the white cottage and she and Dorothy moved in at once. A cousin of Mary, Mrs. Morton's old servant, who had been d.i.c.ky's nurse, came to work for them, and by the time of the first meeting of the United Service Club Dorothy felt so settled in her new home that she wanted to have the meeting in the living-room or the big attic just to see how it felt to be entertaining people in her own house.

"I think I wouldn't suggest it this time," Mrs. Smith warned her. "Helen is the president, you see, and it seems more suitable for the first meeting to be held at her house. Ask if you mayn't have the next one here. How often are you going to meet?"

"I hope it will be once a week, and so does Ethel Blue. She thinks there's plenty of occupation to keep a service club busy all the time."

At noon the sun disappeared and the Rosemont members of the U. S. C.

began to have doubts as to whether the Hanc.o.c.ks and Watkinses would appear.

"Even if it rains hard I think James and Margaret will come," said Helen. "The trolley brings them almost from their door to ours; but I don't feel so sure about the Watkinses."

"It doesn't take but ten minutes longer for them to come out from New York than for the Hanc.o.c.ks to come over from Glen Point."

"But they have to cross the ferry and take the train and it seems more of an undertaking than just to hop into a street car."

"It's getting so dark and gloomy--what do you say if you Ethels make some candy to enliven the afternoon?"

"Is there time before they come?"

"Just about. Try Vinegar Candy this time. If you leave half of it unstirred and stir the other half it will be as good as two kinds, you know."

So the Ethels went off into a pantry back of the kitchen, where Mrs.

Morton had had a small gas stove installed so that the children might cook to their hearts' content without interfering with the occupants of the kitchen.

"There's nothing that upsets people who are trying to make a house run smoothly and to do its work promptly and well as to have children come into the kitchen and use the stove when it is needed for other purposes, and get in the way and leave their cooking apparatus around and their pots and pans uncleaned," declared Mrs. Morton.